Jarric

Monday - week 1 day 1 For myself, I went to bed early to read (currently reading Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovich) For my house, I spent a few minutes clearing up my floordrobe Yesterday (Nibsday, as @starpuck has christened it) was a good day. Crossfit first thing was front squats, and I built to 70kg x 2 x 3, then 75 kg x 3 x 3. Then the workout was 7 => 1 thrusters and bar muscle ups for time. I subbed chest to bar for bar muscle ups, put 40kg on the bar for thrusters, and it all felt pretty rubbish but I got through in 7'24". Work was busy - everyone's in the office on a Monday so there's always lots of distraction catching up with people, on top of which I had a report that I really wanted to get finished and off my desk. I thought I'd do that report by about 2pm; ended up finishing up at 6.30pm and going home late. In the evening WW cooked chicken and parsnip risotto, which was lush, and we chilled in front of an old episode of Taskmaster ahead of the new series starting this week. Then I went to bed early to read, mainly to tick of my self-care goal, but also because I was knackered and everything else seemed like more effort.

If you make good progress on the database idea let me know. I played with that idea last year - we've got several hundred recipe cards from a recipe box which I'd really like to index so that I can filter by ingredients. I very quickly discovered that it wasn't an easy job to do in Excel though, and I couldn't be bothered to learn Access! Having written that, I might have figured out a way I can do this in Excel. WW offered to do all of the data entry, so we'll see if she's still interested in doing that... Cream cheese bagels and fried eggs on toast are both great low-effort meals. I don't know what perogies are, but assume they're good too.

Prove it! Tried this out with the rest of the week. Satyrday and Subday work well, the others not so much.

Exactly! Music is so powerful too; I use the Diablo II music for D&D sometimes and it's such a good fit. 90% sure trying to put your cat in a sling will end up in severe lacerations, unless he's a lot more chilled out than mine Good to see you too

Yeah, I find having to make a decision about food in the moment takes a surprising amount of energy. Is there a way you can automate that decision in future to make it easier? Either by saying 'if I don't know what to eat I always eat X', or by having a bunch of stuff you can just heat up and eat without thought/prep?

Weekend zero was a good weekend. The open beta for Diablo IV went live at 4pm Friday UK time, so I spent a chunk of Friday evening playing that until 1am. Then I spent quite a lot of my Saturday playing it, until 1am Sunday morning. I played Diablo II to death as a teenager, on my own and with friends over LAN in the days before we had high-speed internet, so I'll always have a soft spot for thise games. Managed to get my barbarian past level 20, so I've unlocked the world's cutest backpack if/when I buy the actual game. Outside of that, I went to Parkrun on Saturday morning, and scraped in 1 second under 27 minutes for a 5k. I also ran on Sunday, a casual 4.5 miles in the afternoon sun. Saturday afternoon I also went to a climbing competition at my local climbing gym. It was really hard, and I scored pretty poorly. To be honest I wasn't really feeling it, I was getting anxiety-like symptoms early on and then just felt grumpy and frustrated after that. Still, I got in a couple of tough climbs, and it's nice to tale part in these things. Sunday afternoon I ran D&D. The party were introduced to whiteghost's new characters, a druid and her warrior sidekick, and then I almost killed them immediately in a big fight with a wizard that they foolishly left alive :S . I think that's about it, all in all a decent weekend. Not sure what's going on with tagging on my phone, so sorry for the miaplaced tag @WhiteGhost

Thank you! Good to have you. Thanks, I'm glad you reminded me - that little bit of accountability helped. Thanks, I hope it does help. Don't stress about following though; I've been miles behind on people's threads for ages. Good to have you. And no worries!

Following to see you be more cat, dude.

For those about to rock... I'm a big fan of this, obviously

I haven't done a wrap-up of last challenge, and now is not the time for it. In short, it very much petered out towards the end and I got very poor scores in the last 2 weeks. Average goal completion for weeks 2-5 (which is what set this month's budget) was 41.34%, so I only got to keep £103.34 for my savings, and paid £146.66 off of my mortgage. First challenge this year I had far too many goals, which I acknowledged when I set it up. Last challenge I thought I'd pared it down enough, but I still ended up drifting away and by the end I wasn't even attempting a lot of my goals. So, this challenge will be all about fewer goals, less work, more pedantry about the correct use of the words less and fewer. The cartographer [+2 SAN, +1 CHA] This is all about self-care, which I'm hoping will help me de-stress and feel more focussed. Do something, every day, for myself, and record in my bujo what I did. Options include: Draw Read a book Play computer games Play guitar Journal Whatever else that involves taking time for myself No minimum time requirement on this, just a little something every day. The camp maker [+3 SAN] This one is about caring for my home. I find I'm less stressed when the house is tidier, and I have less hayfever issues if I hoover occasionally. Do something, every day, to clean or tidy the house, and record in my bujo what I did. Again, no minimum time requirement, I just need to do something. And that's it, just two daily goals, and both around getting my headspace together. I'll still be doing, and talking about other stuff of course; crossfit, running, climbing, tracking calories, essay writing, language learning etc., I'm just not tracking them. So, challenge starts tomorrow, let's go! (Side note: I've just posted this thread in the wrong challenge section. Twice! For some reason the 'current challenge' button was taking me there, and I was so tired I didn't even notice.)

Yeah, I mean, it gets hot, so stuff cooks. We do it with gammon quite a bit (sometimes chuck some honey and/or mustard on top, but no liquid) and it comes out lovely. Should work for any joint of meat really. WW cooked the turkey noodle soup. She's given me this recipe:

Chickens in your office is kind of a cool thing to have. I'm sure I'd get bored of the mess fast, but right now it sounds like a great idea.

This is similar to what I do actually. We usually have a roast dinner on Sundays (as is the law in England), so we just get about 1kg of meat for 2 of us and then chuck it in curries/chillis/sanwiches/pasta stuff/whatever during the week. It's arguably even lazier than his method, because we don't even seal the meat, it just goes in an oven dish and goes in the oven for a while. You could do a similar thing with a slow cooker too - you don't even need to add liquid to a slow cooker, you can literally put the meat in, turn it on low, and leave it for 8 hours. @Rhovaniel if you're looking at this method I would also mention that Tesco do massive turkey thighs for £3.50, which I think is ludicrous value. We had turkey roast on Sunday, turkey noodle soup yesterday, and I've just made 4 sandwiches out of the remaining meal (probably could have stretched to 5 if I'm honest).

Aww, that's so cute! I have not pre-ordered the game, so presumably I'll miss out on that, but I did get early access to the beta. Unfortunately I only got one night of it so I'm pretty low level, but looking forward to picking it back up on Friday evening when the open beta goes live.

I don't know where you are with it now, but if you don't meal prep at all now then once a month would be a big jump. If you manage to do a massive batch of 10 meals, that's half the working days of the month. Sure, it's only half, but it's infinitely more than none.

WW and I have spent a good chunk of time catching up on Lego Masters Australia - it's incredibly compelling somehow.

This is a great no context quote.

Downloaded the beta yesterday - time to watch my productivity absolutely tank for the week Man that was a fun game - I could do with a drunken level-zero meathgrinder again sometime.

There's something deeply metal about this sentence. Following of course.

Hey shaar! Love your characters for this challenge; hope they serve you well.

The half-elf at the bar gives a start at the newcomers bustling into the tavern, as though snapping out of a trance. Pint of the black stuff, barkeep, he says automatically, before coming to his senses a little more. Actually, I'll have a trippel bock, if @TimovieMan's buying. Looks like I checked out for a couple of weeks there. Guess it's time to start seeking my next challenge?

He will be missed. I felt very bad for murdering him.

Do you have an idea of how consistent qualifies for this goal? Is it prepping once per month, once per week, every day? It might be that you still need to work that out depending on what kind of meal prep fits for you, but I'm just curious. This sounds absolutely rad; I hope you get to do it. This is beautiful! I need to re-think my challenge trackers.

Well, this challenge is over, and at some point I might just write a wrap-up post. Maybe tomorrow lunchtime? I have just downloaded the Diablo IV beta last night though, so expecting my productivity to be very low for however long I can access that.

10/10 would play Yeah, that's true. I wonder who Zeus is really following...